Impact of the pandemic on the EU population
Population decline and regional variations in 2021
Between 1 January 2021 and 1 January 2022, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the EU population decreased by 265,257 people. This reduction can be attributed to natural changes in the population (more deaths than births), while net migration remained positive (more people entered the EU than left). The pandemic has also played a role in this population dynamic.
In 2021, the gross rate of natural change in the EU population was -2.7 per 1,000 people. At NUTS 3 level, 980 regions out of the 1,164 for which data are available had a negative rate of natural population change (represented by gold tones on the map), 173 regions had a positive rate, and 11 regions had no change (same amount of births as deaths), represented in shades of green-blue on the map, shows Eurostat data.
In 2021, every NUTS 3 region in Bulgaria, Estonia, Croatia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Portugal and Romania had a gross negative rate of natural population change. In the cases of the Czech Republic, Italy, Poland, Slovenia and Slovakia, almost every region recorded a negative rate, with one exception each: the capital region of Hlavní město Praha, Bolzano-Bozen, Poznański and Gdański, the capital region of Osrednjeslovenska and the capital regions of Bratislavský kraj and Prešovský kraj, respectively.
